Last week marked the entrant of another new small business to downtown Durham -- even if this one isn't new to the area at all.
Nomadic Trading Co. has been as peripatetic regionally as the adjective in its name would suggest. From roots in the early 1990s on Hargett St. in downtown Raleigh, to a long-time outpost in Carrboro, owner Demir Williford has seen plenty of business locations, and opportunities, throughout the Triangle -- to say nothing of his partnership in the restaurant Tulula's on Chapel Hill's Franklin Street.
Now he's brought his business to Durham. Nomadic Trading opened the first Saturday in December at 1000 West Main St., the building that once hosted Durham's well-remembered Ivy Room, and which was rehabbed
Traditionally focused on Persian and Turkish textiles and rugs but also including everything from 18th/19th century Indian armoires to storage vessels and amphoras as much as 200 years old to antique copperware to, of late, refurbished American industrial items like factory carts that Williford has rehabbed into coffee tables.
In discussion, Williford's a thoughtful man, given to analytical discussions of the intricacies of issues and items -- be they the ways to tell an antique Turkish rug hand-woven a century ago from modern mass-produced handicrafts, to his studied interest in Durham and its future.
"I was in Carrboro for twelve years. And I was in Carrboro when Carrboro was a lot like here," Williford told BCR last week in an interview. "The difference is that Durham's opportunities are much more vast."
Two years after closing down in the Carrboro train station that had preceded him as the Station bar (and which returned to that use after his business' departure), Williford was working antique festivals up and down the east coast, selling his rugs and wares to collectors and decorators.
He wanted to re-open a retail presence, but couldn't find the right space, one which had flexibility in use as well as character.
Strip shopping centers in Chapel Hill offered him free space to alight there, but Williford described the constraints, including rigid opening/closing hours to accommodate shoppers expecting uniformity.
"The thing about Durham was, the space has to have some meaning. It can't be a strip mall."
He jokes that he's now "completed the Triangle;" he's commuting still from his house in Chapel Hill, but the longtime businessman hearkens back to his retailing class during his business major at UNC-Wilmington in the early 1980s. The only important thing in retail is location, Williford remembers, and from his perspective Durham is poised for much of the same growth and transformation that other urban cores have seen.
And he's suggested to his friends in Chapel Hill/Carrboro and elsewhere who are thinking of moving or expanding that they ought to think about being Bull City bound.
"If you don't look at Durham, you've got to be blind," Williford says.
Williford kicked the tires on the 1000 W. Main Street project for about a year, through much of 2009. The building was renovated by Headwall Development, the Durham company headed by Reynolds Maxwell, also of Maverick Partners.
Maxwell told BCR some months back that he was being patient with the lease-up of the building, looking for the right retail and office tenants. Williford's the first to arrive, signing a lease after Maxwell upfit the space at the corner of Main and Albemarle for retail uses.
He turned to his mailing list of over 1,500 past customers, informing he was re-opening -- and was greeted at 10am on his first day of operation by a longtime customer, who expressed his delight at Nomadic Trading's reopening.
Williford describes his wares as "cultural art," and prides himself on a deep knowledge of the field and the ability to pinpoint a rug's area of origin within a tight radius of where it was produced.
He notes that while there are plenty of rugs afloat in the marketplace, too many are produced by what he calls "biological machines," native workers in developing countries who are hand-producing rug after rug without creativity in what's very much a manufacturing business.
Nomadic Trading focuses on rugs that were usually made for a family's own use, not for sale in the marketplace; he notes that the discovery of the financial viability and marketability of such weaves was what inspired the mass-production trade in such rugs in the first place. Some select new rugs are also available for sale.
"I am still truly interested in rugs that are more tribal and ethnic in origin," says Williford. "When I sell a rug, I'm selling a part of cultural history and art."
And while rugs and textiles are the first thing you see in the store, don't be surprised to spy everything from Pakistani tribal furniture and items from the Swat Valley to Turkish calligraphy and antique lamps.
College football fans, take note: there's even a pair of Texas longhorns hanging under an eastern window of the store, courtesy of an antique show trip to the Lone Star State.
"I've never had longhorns! I want them!" he described as his reaction upon spying them -- one of a range of objects acquired over travel, now seeking new homes.
See also Durham Magazine's November profile of Nomadic Trading Co. at the DM Blog.
Congratulations Demir! Great Article!
-Marcello
Posted by: Marcello | December 15, 2009 at 01:02 PM